Elevated BRT: Is Higher Better? Lessons from China and Indonesia

This paragraph below is an excerpt from an article titled “Elevated BRT: Is Higher Better? Lessons from China and Indonesia. ” from Sustainable Transport Magazine Issue 29, 2018.

” Elsewhere in Asia, the massive metropolis of Jakarta started riding BRT in 2004. Since then, the Indonesian capital has developed a citywide mass transport system with 12 BRT corridors, more than 1,500 buses, and over 400,000 passengers daily. But dedicated lanes are not always respected, and the police have been known to direct private car drivers into bus lanes during peak hours. That makes an elevated system an enticing prospect. Transjakarta, the city-owned BRT system, opened its first elevated lane this year, called Corridor 13. The project began in late 2014 and was due to be finished in 2016, but land disputes pushed completion to mid-2017. Corridor 13 connects the transit hubs of Ciledug in Tangerang and Tendean in South Jakarta, and it is built almost entirely as an elevated corridor. Transjakarta buses travel on an elevated road an average of 12 meters above street level and in some places up to 25 meters.

However, the first elevated BRT lane in Indonesia is not without issues. The elevation means slower bus speeds—negating one of the key advantages of BRT. Three different contractors worked on the project, which created some design and color differences that might confuse passengers, though the entire system is structurally fine. While Corridor 13 overlaps with the four other Transjakarta corridors, there is no actual integration or connecting link to the other corridors. As this corridor is built without an exit and entry ramp in the middle, buses will only be able to enter the corridor from the very beginning or the end. Without physical integration, passengers cannot easily change their route in the middle of their trip, which discourages them from using this corridor. The corridor also has accessibility issues, especially for disabled and elderly passengers. There is no elevator, and a picture of a steep access staircase went viral on social media. “